The Expansion of Public Education 


in New Jersey 


Inaugural Address 


by 
President John M. Thomas 


RUTGERS UNIVERSITY BULLETIN 
OCTOBER, 1925 


SERIES 1, No. 4. 


Entered as Second Class Matter at the Post Office at New Brunswick, 
. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage ke for in 
Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, eutfignieed April 15, 1921. 





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Address by Dr. John M. Thomas at his 
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OCTOBER 14, 1925 


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THE EXPANSION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 
IN NEW JERSEY 


WHEN the history of the infancy of the American nation shall 
be written, the period from the establishment of independence to the 
close of the world war, no achievement will stand out as more sig- 
nificant, more indicative of the genius of the American people or 
more creditable to them than the marvelous expansion of public 
education. 

We carelessly take for granted that educational opportunities 
have always been open to American youth very much as they are 
today. Indeed, popular orators frequently glorify “the little red 
school house” and other educational enterprises of the days of the 
fathers to the disparagement of our present practices. 

As a matter of fact, general popular education is quite a modern, 
even recent, institution, and in its origination and extension this 
nation has been a creative leader. For the first fifty years of our 
republic education in the majority of the states was entirely a private 
affair, promoted and supported exclusively by churches and by 
philanthropic individuals, as had been the practice in the lands from 
which the colonists came. In New Jersey before 1820 there was no 
authority in law for any municipality to levy taxes for educational 
purposes of any kind. In that year it first became legal in this state 
to support schools from public funds and then only “for the edu- 
cation of such poor children as are paupers.” Not until eighteen 
years later, in 1838, was it possible for a citizen of New Jersey to 
secure the education of his children at public expense except by 
putting his name to an affidavit which branded them as paupers. 
There is not a school in New Jersey which as a public institution, 
supported by all for the benefit of all, is one hundred years old. 

The first free public school in New Jersey, established by public 
action, maintained by taxation and open to all without discrimina- 
tion, was erected in the city of Newark in 1838. 


THE FIGHT FOR FREE SCHOOLS 


It must not be thought that our present magnificent system of 
public education grew up spontaneously and easily, without effort 
or fight. A vigorous campaign of public propaganda, extending over 
many years and prosecuted vigorously by able and self-sacrificing 
citizens, was necessary before the state could be brought to see its 
duty to open school house doors to all its youth. It is pleasing to 


4 InNauGURAL: The Expansion of 


note that in that patriotic endeavor of some ninety years back the 
men of Rutgers bore an honorable part. In 1834 a committee of 
the newly formed Alumni Association proposed an organization of 
the graduates of all colleges to “raise the standard of public in- 
struction throughout the Union.” These youth, their leader only 
three years out of college, even essayed a memorial to the legislature 
of New Jersey for the improvement of common school education. 
They were obliged to report a year later (1835) that “no schools 
purely public have been established. The public documents of the 
state afford no certain intelligence in regard to the number and con- 
dition of schools, the system of education pursued in them, or their 
pecuniary resources.” The names of these three alumni, Abraham 
Polhemus, ’31, John Forsyth, ’29, and Rush VanDyke, ’30, who 
put “Rutgers in the van” in the fight for free schools in New Jersey, 
deserve to be enshrined on a tablet on this campus, preferably in a 
building of the college of education consecrated to the service of the 
public schools of New Jersey. Such a tablet might well perpetuate 
the eloquence of the “Address to the people of New Jersey” adopted 
at a popular convention in 1838: 

We utterly repudiate as unworthy, not of freemen only, but of men, the nar- 
row notion that there is to be an education for the poor as such. Has God 
provided for the poor a coarser earth, a thinner air, a paler sky? Does not the 
glorious sun pour down his golden flood as cheerily on the poor man’s hovel 
as upon the rich man’s palace? Have not the cotter’s children as keen a sense 
of all the freshness, verdure, fragrance, melody and beauty of luxuriant 
nature as the pale sons of kings? Or is it on the mind that God has stamped 
the imprint of a baser birth, so that the poor man’s child knows with an inborn 
certainty that his lot is to crawl, not climb? It is not so. God has not done it. 
Man can not do it. 

By men whose souls thus burned within them the battle for pub- 
lic schools was won, and thirteen years hence New Jersey may well 
celebrate the centennial. But what sort of schools were they, and 
what was the scope of the education thus made available to the chil- 
dren of every home? Undoubtedly, as the schools established demcn- 
strate, it was in elementary branches only, the so-called “common 
school education.” Advanced and higher studies, such as are now 
taught in high schools, were not to be common for many years. 
Beyond doubt if the young Rutgers alumni and other fighters for 
public schools had proposed in 1838 that the people were to be 
taxed to support schools where boys and girls might study Latin 
and algebra, home economics and mechanical drawing, they would 
have lost their cause. In all probability even tse ambitions and 
visions of the leaders did not extend thus far. 





Public Education in New Jersey x) 


DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC. HIGH SCHOOLS 


Free public secondary and high school education is a matter of 
comparatively very recent date. The oldest public high school in 
the United States celebrated its one hundredth anniversary less than 
five years ago. 

In 1860 there were only four high schools in New Jersey. Six- 
teen years later there were eleven high schools, attended by 1,607 
pupils. Note the steady and very large expansion of public sec- 
ondary education since that time. 


Year No. of high schools Students 
1895 22 1155 
1900 57 14,397 
1910 109 24,739 
1920 137 55,243 
1924 157 86,459 


Ten years after the civil war high school privileges were open to 
only about thirty per cent. of the young people of New Jersey. 
Today, thank God, there is not a boy in the state, no matter how 
remote his home nor how humble his circumstances, but may receive 
a high-school education, a better and more advanced education than 
many colleges afforded fifty years ago, absolutely without cost for 
instruction. If his own community does not provide the school, 
the state will pay his tuition in the high school of some neighboring 
city or town. 

A similar provision is on the statute books of every state in the 
union. Gradually yet rapidly, without the dramatic contest which 
was necessary for the establishment of the free elementary schools, 
public education has advanced in grade to include the four years of 
the secondary school. There are now more than 19,000 high schools 
in the United States and we are erecting new ones at the rate of 
one a day. Most of them are large structures, of pemanent con- 
struction, costing more than the value of the entire plant of this col- 
lege just a few years ago. They provide instruction, not merely in 
the standard subjects, but also in many cases preparation for useful 
trades and industries—agriculture, carpentry, machine construction 
and repairs, textiles and other occupations which the industries of | 
the community may suggest. / 


CAUSES OF EXPANSION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 


Before noting the still further expansion of the public schools 
to include higher education, the state college and the state university, 

let us stop to inquire the reason why the American people, at such 
13 


6 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


enormous pains and cost, have built and maintained all these schools 
and why they have constantly improved them and advanced their 
grade. 

Is it because the fathers and mothers of this generation love their 
children more than the parents of other years? I do not believe 
that that is true. 

Are we more devoted to education in principle than were the 
fathers? ‘The truth does not lie in that statement either. No citizen 
of today, whether publicist or professional school man, is asserting 
the necessity of general education more strongly than did the fathers 
of our republic. To quote but one, James Madison said: 

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquir- 
ing it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. 

Statements not less strong might be cited from the writings of 
Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, John Adams and many others. 

But one may say, the fathers advocated elementary education in 
the simpler branches, which is sound public policy, but subsequent 
development has gone too far and is largely a matter of “fads and 
frills.’ Answer must be made that the expansion of American edu- — 
cation is too great a movement, too widely extended, and has con- 
tinued steadily gaining in force too many years to be thus explained. 
Great results come from great causes. American communities large 
and small, of every sort and every heritage, in every section of every 
state, would not for nearly a century have increasingly taxed them- 
selves for higher and better schools unless there had been a very 
sound and substantial reason affecting practically their every day 
life why they should do so. 


EXPANSION DUE TO ECONOMIC NECESSITY 


That reason is to be found in the vastly increased and steadily 
increasing complexity of our industrial life, due to the application of 
science and the use of complicated machinery in the supply of what 
have come to be the common necessities of life. The education 
which was sufficient for the simpler processes of the older days 
cannot produce the men who are required for the more complex 
processes and the great organizations which are now necessary to our 
existence. It is economic necessity which has extended public edu- 
cation to every hamlet in the nation and has raised the grade steadily 
up through the high school to include now the state college and the 
state university. In the old days of hand tools and individual 
manual labor a simple education sufficed, and many of no education 


Public Education in New Jersey 7 


at all could find a place in the economic order. But everywhere 
hand labor has given place to machinery and individual operation 
has been merged into organization, and therefore education sufficient 
to equip men for the new processes is essential. 

Transportation in stage-coach days required wheelwrights who 
could build stage-coaches and men who could drive horses. Trans- 
portation today demands civil engineers, mechanical engineers, elec- 
trical engineers, economists, statisticians and experts in scores of 
other fields demanding a high order of intelligence and training, to 
say nothing of the men of large executive capacity who are able 
to command efficient management of an immense organization. 

In the time of Washington communication was by post-riders 
with saddle-bags or stages carrying mail, and in the time of Wash- 
ington college men did not go into the communication business. To- 
day the telephone companies alone would be glad of many more 
college men soundly trained in communication engineering than are 
graduating from our technical institutions. 


AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES AND EDUCATION 


Up to about fifty years ago there had been little change in agri- 
cultural practices from the days when the greatest of all teachers 
watched the sower going forth to sow. But within the days of men 
now living the little bag of grain slung over the sower’s shoulder 
has given way to the mechanical seeder, the single plow heavily 
dragged by horses has been displaced by a gang of plows following 
a tractor, and the sickle, the cradle and the flail gather dust in old 
farmhouse attics. It used to take four hours of manual labor to 
grow a bushel of wheat; now it takes ten minutes. Our agricultural 
extension men go out from Rutgers to talk to farmers about chem- 
istry, biology, bacteriology and the laws of genetics, and they are 
understood of them also, better than many college graduates would 
have understood scarcely twenty years ago. 

Improvements in agricultural practice have made our modern indus- 
trial civilization possible. There used to be five men on the farm for 
one man in the town; there are now two men in the town, engaged in 
industry and commerce, for each man engaged in agriculture. Yet 
American farmers still produce over 90 per cent. of our food sup- 
ply, 40 per cent. of the raw material of manufacture, and 50 per cent. 
of the gross tonnage of American railways. If the man on the 
farm had not learned to use machinery and to apply science to his 
industry, in some crops producing four times the yield per acre 


> 


8 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


received under the old methods and with less manual labor, our in- 
dustries would cease and our great city population would starve. 


PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION NECESSARY 


Examples of increased complexity might be multiplied to the 
end of the catalogue of present-day occupations which have to do 
with supply of human wants. Everywhere science is entering into 
common things, and large organizations are taking the place of 
small units. In every example which might be cited the reasons 
would be clear why the expansion of public education could not 
stop with the high school, but was continued inevitably to include 
the college and university. In every industry and in every branch of 
commerce and trade knowledge is required which is proper and 
possible to be pursued only in institutions of higher learning. 

Adolescent or secondary education does not reach high enough 
to supply the knowledge or to build the men required for many 
operations in the highly involved processes of today. Youth of 
high-school age may be taught the use of tools of knowledge, lan- 
guages, elementary science and mathematics, and they may and do 
acquire such knowledge and skill as will make them useful citizens, 
and in some instances they acquire the method and the ambition 
which lead them to go far. But agriculture can not resort to high 
schools to learn how to combat the insect pests and plant diseases 
which bring a new plague every season, nor can a manufacturer 
expect a high-school teacher of chemistry to turn from his teaching 
to discover a possible economy in the operation of his plant. Progress 
depends upon constant experiment and upon patient and energetic 
research, which are possible only in a university. The men most 
needed by industry are men whose manhood powers have been 
trained, who have caught the inspiration and the method of leadership 
and command and of doing new things in new ways. Such men are 
made most surely in an institution of higher learning where dwell 
masters of discovery who kindle in youth the enthusiasm and the 
joy of the intellectual pioneer. 

The extension of public education into the higher ranges is, 
therefore, no accident, nor is the marvelous development of state col- 
leges and universities a temporary phenomenon. It is based on the 
same economic necessity which forced elementary public education a 
century ago and which has built a public high school in every city 
and village from sea to sea. Every commonwealth in the Union 
has now its land grant college or state university, in many in- 


Public Education in New Jersey 9 


stances combined in one institution. More than one-third the col- 
lege students of the United States are now enrolled in the land 
grant colleges. These state institutions in the past twenty-five years 
alone have graduated well over one-fourth of the graduates of 
American colleges since the chartering of Harvard in 1643. 


RUTGERS THE STATE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY 


Rutgers University is the New Jersey unit of the system of pub- 
lic colleges and universities in the United States. When Abraham 
Lincoln had signed the Morrill Act of Congress in 1862, and the 
state of New Jersey had accepted its provisions in 1863, the trustees 
of Rutgers College entered into perpetual contract with the state, 
and through the state with the federal government, to become the 
corporate agent of the state in the field of higher education. That 
contract obligated Rutgers to maintain a division in which “the lead- 
ing object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical 
studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of 
learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.” The 
institution further obligated itself to maintain vocational courses, 
and that in the broadest terms—“in order to promote the liberal and 
practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits 
and professions of life.” 

This contract was not forced upon Rutgers, but was sought for 
eagerly and welcomed gladly. As Dr. Demarest in his monumental 
history of Rutgers says, in reciting the passage of the Morrill Act, 
“the men of Rutgers were alive to the situation.” It has been the 
boast of Rutgers that the statesmanship of President Campbell 
and the skill and farsighted vision of that great prophetic Rutgers 
leader, Professor George H. Cook, secured this great benefit to the 
institution. 


ADVANTAGES TO STATE OF RUTGERS CONNECTION 


It may be presumed that reasons of economy and prudence in- 
fluenced the people in creating Rutgers the instrument of the state 
in public higher education. They were good reasons. To have 
built and maintained a new institution would have cost the state 
many millions of dollars. Granted that a college of the land-grant 
type was needed in New Jersey, of which there can be no doubt, 
Rutgers has saved the state an enormous sum and is still effecting 
an annual saving of no mean proportions. 


10 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


But reasons other than economy may well have obtained, or at 
least can now be seen to have been valid. By delegating responsi- 
bility to the trustees of Rutgers, New Jersey has been spared po- 
litical control of higher education. It is not possible in this state 
for a single state official to dictate the abolition of a course of study 
or to force curtailment which shuts the doors of opportunity to 
hundreds of deserving students. 

By the New Jersey plan of contract with Rutgers the state re- 
ceives the services of trustees of a high order of ability, of long 
experience in university government and of conscientious apprecia- 
tion of the responsibilities of a trust whether public or private. 
The trustees of Rutgers may be expected to discharge the duties of 
Rutgers to the state all the more carefully for the reason that their 
office is not political, and so long as those duties are faithfully and 
patriotically performed there need be no change. 

Further by contract with Rutgers the state secured for its pub- 
lic higher education the invaluable tradition of a great and noble 
colonial college. It safeguarded New Jersey youth who might have 
benefit from the state’s provision for higher education from the nar- 
rowness and the crudeness of a purely utilitarian institution. It 
guaranteed that they would prepare for the several pursuits and 
professions of life on a campus where the love of learning had been 
fostered for more than a century, where literature and art had been 
cultivated, where Jacob Cooper taught Homer, and the stately Doo- 
little taught rhetoric, and David Murray, who led Japan from feudal- 
ism to modern civilization in a generation, taught mathematics, and 
Austin Scott made the past a living present before the awakening 
souls of youth. 

Yet more, the choice of Rutgers secured for the New Jersey 
youth and for all others who might choose the state institution the 
unspeakable privilege of development into manhood in a college 
founded in the fear of God by men who sought first and above all 
to inculcate religious faith and high moral character. Under its 
present constitution and laws Rutgers University in all its parts 
is completely non-sectarian and has no connection with any eccle- 
siastical body. But the halo of prayer still hovers over old Queen’s 
and will linger there to the end of time, and New Jersey youth of 
every faith will be the worthier men and the more loyal to their own 
faith, whatever it may be, because the foundation of Rutgers was 
in the fear of God. 


ee 





Public Education in New Jersey 11 


MAINTENANCE OF THE HISTORIC COLLEGE 


I may be asked if I would preserve the old college. I answer, it 
must be preserved, not only for its own sake, but also for the sake of 
the service which Rutgers must render to the state. Because we 
must discharge to the full our obligations as a servant of the state, 
we must maintain all that is worthy in the cultural tradition of old 
Rutgers. We ought not merely to preserve the historic college; we 
ought immeasurably to strengthen it. The heart of the institution 
should be a strong college of liberal arts, with pursuit of literature, 
of the classics, of philosophy and all kindred subjects not less in- 
tense than they have been in the old days, but more so. 

None will have greater benefit from emphasis upon the liberal arts 
and pure sciences than the students in technical courses in agricul- 
ture, engineering, ceramics and similar schools. The ability to con- 
vey personal power and to impress truth upon other minds, which 
measure the value of the technical man, are gained not so much 
from technical studies as from the humanities. If Rutgers does her 
full duty by the humane studies, both old and new, the state will 
have far stronger technical colleges within the university than she 
would possess if she conducted technical institutions independently. 

On the other hand, pure science may be best taught in close con- 
nection with its practical application. Departments of chemistry, 
botany, physics and the like should be all the stronger at Rutgers be- 
cause there is no sharp line of demarcation between courses for the 
technical and the non-technical student. Instructors cannot fail to 
be more alert if their work is to be tested in the professional ser- 
vices of many of their pupils, and the interest of students must be 


keener when the application of the subject is constantly before their 
minds. 


RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY 


Rutgers may well glory in her character and mission as the land- 
grant college of New Jersey and in her recent designation as the 
state university of New Jersey. With all my heart I welcome the 
responsibilities and the privileges conveyed by those terms. I wel- 
come them, not because they are likely to bring buildings and money, 
but because they convey opportunities of great public service and a 
definite and magnificent educational field. I would keep back noth- 
ing that Rutgers has from the service of the commonwealth by 
whose support and encouragement she has grown from a college of 
a few score students to the commanding institution she is today. It 


12 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


is impossible to maintain a practical distinction between that which 
traces its origin to the old college and that which derives its sup- 
port from the state. Students pass from one section to another with- 
out a thought of difference, and in the public mind there is and can 
be but one institution, Rutgers University, composed of separate col- 
leges according to their function, but one and all partaking of the 
noble heritage of the Rutgers founded in 1766, and one and all 
consecrated alike to the service of the commonwealth which from 
the earliest days it was in her heart to serve. 

For Rutgers was founded for a practical purpose, with a voca- 
tional aim primarily in mind, “to prepare youth for the ministry and 
other good offices.” It is significant that there is mention of “useful 
arts and sciences” in her charter, which was most unusual in the 
college foundations of that day. It was a true instinct on the part 
of both Rutgers and the people of the state which led to the location 
of public higher education in New Jersey in this institution. 


RESPONSIBILITY RESTING UPON RUTGERS 


Let us then welcome our present responsibilities in relation to . 
the state gladly, and let us discharge them generously and in the fear 
of God. Let us seek definition of our responsibility, not in the 
bare letter of statutes, but in the needs of the state and in the 
precedents of higher education in commonwealths where it has been 
most useful. What any state institution has done for any state, in 
research, in extension, in any field of education, that Rutgers will 
gladly do for her state, if the need arise and if resources permit. We 
should not wait to be urged or driven; we should ourselves be 
alert to see and make clear the need and to suggest practical ways 
to meet it. 


THE SERVICES OF RUTGERS TO THE STATE 


The notable services already rendered by Rutgers as the state 
institution justify abundantly the support she has received and give 
promise of still greater services in the future. It may seem a far 
cry from a modest Rutgers laboratory of fifty years ago and a quiet 
professor going about pounding rocks to the teeming cities of the 
New Jersey coast where the millions of Americans find health and 
recreation, but had it not been for the quiet Rutgers professor those 
cities would never have been built and the sands of the Jersey sea- 
shore would have remained barren and waste. It was George H. 
Cook, Rutgers professor, state geologist, one of the fathers of the 


Public Education in New Jersey i 


agricultural experiment stations of the nation, who taught the coast 
cities the sources of their pure water supply and made the shore 
development possible. Every pottery and clay-working plant in the 
state owes its prosperity to the same modest scientist. The services 
of George H. Cook have alone been worth more to the state of New 
Jersey than all the appropriations Rutgers has ever received from 
both state and federal governments. 

The work of our agricultural experiment station has been of 

great value in the transition of New Jersey agriculture from gen- 
eral farming to the specialized agriculture in fruit, truck crops, 
poultry and market milk, which now adds more than one hundred 
millions a year to the income of the state. In plant pathology, 
entomology and particularly in soil science our experiment station 
has taken high rank. It has the confidence and good will of the 
thirty thousand farmers of the state and not less that of industries 
related to agriculture. In the proportion of its graduate students 
the Rutgers College of Agriculture ranks among the first of the 
nation. 

Organized only ten years ago, the agricultural extension service 
administered by this college has already made an important place 
for itself in the agriculture of the state. County agents are located 
in eighteen of the agricultural counties. With them cooperate 
twelve extension specialists, bringing the best that agricultural science 
has to offer to practical demonstration on the farm. Clubs for boys 
and girls, of which 232 were active last year, enrolling 2,800 mem- 
bers, have transformed farm life in many communities. Among the 
women fourteen home demonstration agents are active, doing a 
work than which none under Rutgers auspices is more beneficent or 
more deeply appreciated. The further extension of this service to 
women of the industrial centers is an inviting field. 


THE COLLEGE FOR WOMEN 


Down to 1918 extension activities were the only Rutgers ser- 
vices to the women of the state. New Jersey was the last state of 
the union to open the way to higher education to women, but she 
has shown the zeal of a convert in the past seven years. The story 
of the founding and the heroic struggles and the remarkable progress 
‘of our New Jersey College for Women, under the able leadership 
of Dean Mabel S. Douglass, is one of the romances of American 
higher education. The record of that first winter in the extem- 
porized college hall with girls moving their beds during every 


14 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


storm to dry spots on the floor and studying with coats on and 
galoshes to keep out the cold deserves place with the biographies of 
Mary Lyon and Emma Willard and other pioneers of the higher 
education of women. After only seven years the College for Women 
has 690 students, property of nearly one and a half millions, an 
annual budget of approximately a million dollars, and is firmly fixed 
in the confidence and good will of the people of the state. 


THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING 


In no field has the economic necessity of higher education been 
more manifest or exerted a greater stimulus than in the field of 
engineering. Two years ago the National Industrial Conference 
Board, after careful study, declared that industry makes an annual 
demand for engineers equivalent to many times the number of 
competent engineering graduates. 

Every year in which engineering education remains stationary 
the situation becomes more serious. Science is hurrying forward 
new developments which require engineering skill in their com- 
mercial operation. Foreign competition and the restriction of immi- 
gration make greater demands for large organization and for com- 
plex mechanical processes, which in turn require more executives, 
more expert supervisors, more engineers. The continuance of our 
national welfare and prosperity depends, more than any other factor, 
upon an adequate supply of capable men, trained thoroughly in ap- 
plied science and engineering. 

In New Jersey the situation is peculiarly acute. We are already 
a great industrial state, the sixth in the Union in the value of manu- 
factures, and we are increasing in population and in industrial out- 
put more rapidly than either of our giant neighbors, New York 
and Pennsylvania. In the past fifteen years the value of manu- 
factured products in this state has increased nearly five-fold and 
now approximates four billions a year, or forty times as much as the 
one hundred millions produced by New Jersey agriculture. Soon 
the entire northern portion of New Jersey, and eventually the greater 
part of the entire state, will be one solid industrial community, inter- 
spersed with residential cities as attractive as any in America. 

Since 1869 the Rutgers College of Engineering has sent out a 
steady stream of well-trained men, the majority of whom have found 
employment in New Jersey and are still in active service. But even 
with the output of other colleges of engineering in the state, the 
supply of men is sadly disproportionate to the needs. New Jersey 


Public Education in New Jersey 15 


industry is today chiefly dependent upon technical schools outside the 
state, and from lack of opportunity and facilities over 66 per cent. 
of the New Jersey students of engineering are going outside the 
state for their education. New Jersey is taking care of a smaller 
proportion of her technical students than any other state. 

The situation calls for prompt and substantial development of 
the Rutgers College of Engineering, for enlargement and strengthen- 
ing of personnel and for the building of laboratories, shops and 
draughting rooms and office and recitation buildings on a scale for 
which the space available on the old campus is entirely insufficient 
Our present engineering building is scarcely adequate for one-third 
the program we are conducting today and could readily be adapted to 
other uses. An engineering experiment station should be estab- 
lished at the earliest possible opportunity. Such an experimental 
institute to conduct researches and tests for industrial organizations 
and for state departments would be of immense value, particularly 
to the smaller and developing industries which are not able to sup- 
port research departments. 


INDUSTRIAL EXTENSION 


The further training and education of operatives in service has 
come to be a serious care of every progressive industry. Ambitious 
workers in this state, in the legitimate ambition to increase their 
efficiency and to advance their positions, are now paying thousands 
of dollars a year to schools conducted for profit. The state owes 
it to its citizens who are creating the wealth by which it lives to 
support a department of industrial extension which will take the 
benefits of the state university to every industrial community of 
New: Jersey. No organization is in such favored position to pro- 
mote the education of industrial workers in whatever may make 
them better operatives and better citizens as the technical institu- 
tion under state auspices. If Rutgers is to do her duty, the whole 
state must be her campus. 


TRAINING OF TEACHERS 


For several years Rutgers has included in her organization a 
school of education designed to assist in the equipment and further 
education of teachers and supervisors for the public schools of the 
state. Only the smallest fraction of the college graduates holding 
school positions in New Jersey have their degrees from New Jersey 
institutions. Something has been done at Rutgers in the past ten 


16 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


years to supply New Jersey high schools with New Jersey teachers 
and to inculcate New Jersey loyalty in those already in service. The 
summer session and the college for women have made a contribution 
toward this patriotic endeavor. Far more, however, must be at- 
tempted. The school of education deserves strong support, not for 
the sake of Rutgers, but for the benefit of the schools of the state. 
It bespeaks the cooperation and assistance of the state Board of 
Education and of the teachers of the state through their organizations 
and personal support. It should have a larger staff, and should be 
encouraged to establish a bureau of research for the public schools 
of the state, to enlarge its extension activities and to send to the 
high schools an expert vocational adviser for counsel with the 
thousands of our boys and girls at that most pathetic period of life, 
when they do not know what the world has for them to do. 


A GRADUATE SCHOOL 


I must pass by other fields of service, which are not less inter- 
esting and important: ceramics, in which Rutgers University through 
state cooperation has won an enviable position; chemical engineering, 
most inviting of all new fields; business administration, into which 
students are everywhere pressing eagerly. 

But one departure I cannot omit to urge. A college teacher 
who is not advancing in his field is not fit to be a college teacher. 
Chemistry five years old is out of date. There is no room ina 
vigorous institution for a teacher who drones lectures on subjects 
in which he has completed his knowledge or who merely hears reci- 
tations from text-books which were behind the times before they 
were published. Alleged research and study to keep up with one’s 
profession are apt to be desultory and of little use unless they 
function as part of the scheduled and recognized work of the in- 
stitution, with regularly approved projects and reports. The or- 
ganization of graduate work is the most efficient and economical 
means which can be taken to increase the efficiency of undergraduate 
teaching. Without such organization the lapse of years will bring 
us to a faculty of inferior, lethargic, visionless men, who are not 
wanted in aggressive institutions. The able scientists today choose 
positions in universities where the spirit of research is active. A 
university without a graduate school is a misnomer and a university 
which does not do its share toward the furtherance of the scholar- 
ship on which all universities live is a parasite on its sister institu- 


tions. 





Public Education in New Jersey 17 


No suggestion has come to me more frequently frem members of 
the faculty since I assumed duty at Rutgers than the organization 
of a graduate school. We already offer seventy courses of graduate 
rank in thirteen departments. A work of that size is worthy of or- 
ganization with a responsible executive. The cost above the present 
lack of organization would be inconsiderable. We should either 
abandon the advanced work and save the money we now spend for 
it or organize it more effectively and get more out of it. If Rutgers 
University is to go forward, there is no doubt which alternative 
we must choose. 


THE OPPORTUNITY BEFORE RUTGERS 


I believe Rutgers University will go forward, and that she is 
faced today by magnificent opportunity. The field in public higher 
education is wide open to her in New Jersey, and there are none 
who wish to hold her back or who will be jealous of her progress. 

The educational tradition of the state is sound and progressive. 
Better public schools than those conducted in many New Jersey 
cities and towns do not exist in America. 

But in higher education comparisons are not so gratifying. It 
is not pleasant to be told that New Jersey is less well supplied with 
colleges in proportion to population than any other state; that New 
Jersey sends a larger proportion of her youth outside the state for 
college education than any other of the American commonwealths ; 
that whereas more than 75 per cent. of American college students 
attend a college or university in their own state, only 18 per cent. 
of New Jersey college students are enrolled in New Jersey colleges. 
With all due allowance for the location of great cities with many 
educational advantages just across our borders, these facts raise 
the question whether New Jersey has been doing her full duty in 
the field of higher education. 

It may be that Rutgers is partly to blame. Certainly she has not 
been aggressive in seeking state support, possibly for fear of loss 
of the cultural tradition or of undue political influence. I believe 
that such fears are groundless and that Rutgers should now seek 
to lead in a vigorous advance in public higher education in New 
Jersey. 

If anywhere there is to be a state university in New Jersey, it 
must be here at Rutgers. If the way to the power that knowledge 
gives is to be open freely to the youth of this state, as it is open in 
well-nigh every other state, that way must be opened at Rutgers. 


18 INAUGURAL: The Expansion of 


We have preempted the field of public higher education in New 
Jersey; as men of conscience we must go forward to cultivate it 
with all our strength and skill. 


THE SUMMONS TO A FORWARD MOVEMENT 


We are summoned forward by the many thousands, the in- 
creasing thousands of boys and girls graduating from the public 
high schools of the state who can pursue a college course only in 
an institution in which public funds reduce the cost to the student. 

The mighty industrial development of the state sounds a yet 
more urgent call. Under present economic conditions there is a 
more compelling motive for the support of higher education than 
sympathy for the student. I doubt if it can be logically maintained 
that every youth who desires it should receive a college education 
wholly, or even partly, at the expense of the state. Higher educa- 
tion is an exceptional privilege, and in a democracy there should be 
no exceptional privilege for the sake of the individual. Not out of 
sympathy for the student, but out of cold business calculation of 
the necessity of large numbers of highly trained men and women for 
the several pursuits and professions of this age of science, the com- 
monwealths of this nation are rapidly expanding their great demo- 
cratic institutions of higher and professional learning. We cannot 
go back to stage-coaches and the town pump and three-story build- 
ings; we must have engineers. The scientist has come to the aid 
of agriculture to stay, and none know it better than the farmers 
themselves. With all the outpouring of private benevolence toward 
higher education, unparalleled in the history of the world, American 
industry and American civilization depend for their maintenance 
and progress upon scientific research and production of. technical 
experts on a scale and in fields which only institutions supported 
by all the resources of the state can supply. 

All citizens have benefit from scientific advance. It is reason- 
able, therefore, for all citizens to contribute to the advancement of 
science and it elevates the entire citizenry of a state when they do so. 


THE STATE UNIVERSITY AND CIVIC SPIRIT 


The state of New Jersey has its own peculiar reason for the 
development of a state university as the capstone of its system of 
public education. Because many of its cities are suburban to New 
York and Philadelphia, patriotic interest in New Jersey affairs is 
difficult to maintain. No state has a prouder history than New 


i ees 
A Pe —~ 


ms 


Public Education in New Jersey 19 


Jersey, and yet state pride is not so intense in New Jersey as it is 
in Vermont, for example. No state has greater need of intelligent 
and active public spirit, but my experience as a resident of this state 
leads me to believe that not infrequently the commonwealth suffers 
harm because interest in state affairs is not more keen. 

A state university worthy of the intelligence and industrial promi- 
nence of New Jersey would be an instrument of high value and 
effectiveness in awakening state pride and achievement. We shall 
never have effective patriotic interest in our own state business 
so long as 82 per cent. of our most ambitious youth feel obliged 
to leave their native state for the privileges of higher education. 

Strategically located at the center of the state, close to the state 
capital, with convenient transportation facilities, Rutgers University 
has all necessary advantages for a state university development 
which will awaken New Jersey patriotism and interest in civic mat- 
ters to a degree never before known. 


DIFFICULTIES AND ENCOURAGEMENTS 


I am aware that some will say that we are attempting an im- 
possible task; that the two types of institution, public and private, 
now mingled at Rutgers are absolutely diverse; that the ideal of the 
old college is service through the culture of a few leaders for posi- 
tions of special prominence, while the purpose of a state institution 
is service by carrying to the entire population of a commonwealth 
the truths of science and of learning for assistance in their daily toil. 
The old proverb about riding two horses at the same time may be 
cited. 

That difficulties exist need not be denied. That a college socially 
selective in its clientele, scornful of vocational curricula, insistent 
above all things on the maintenance of tradition, cannot serve the 
purpose of a state institution may be freely admitted. That a uni- 
versity responsive to the needs of a great industrial commonwealth 
may lose some of the amenities of a strictly private institution must 
be frankly faced. | 

But it is not a revolution which faces Rutgers, but a natural de- 
velopment in accordance with tendencies increasingly manifest for 
fifty years. Rutgers has not been in too great haste to cast off the 
old and to take on the new. She has been a conservative institution, 
in accordance with the spirit of her founders. But she has proved 
by long and thorough trial that without loss to the old foundation 
she can serve well in the technical and vocational fields. If the 


20 INAUGURAL | 


modest service of the past has not injured her, but has brought her } 
increased honor and strength, as all will admit has been the case, a 4 
still greater service in the future with more alert responsiveness to j 
state needs will only add yet more to the Rutgers which the fathers ii 
loved. : 







THE MOTIVE AND THE METHOD 


If we go deep enough and leave trivialities out of consideration, et 
there is but one motive and one spirit which animated the Dutch aia 
fathers who provided yonder in old Queen’s for the instruction of Beat 
youth in Latin and in Divinity, and which now animates us as we \iiim 
essay a worthy home for the applied sciences for the benefit of jiamiay 
New Jersey industry. That motive is service by means of higher jqimaam 
learning in whatever fields and by whatever means in the changing jam 
years the providence of the good God may lead the way. Ht ; 

We follow His providence, not the standards and ‘types of the gam 
definitions of educational text-books. One policy is the next sen- jaime 
sible step ahead, now as in the times of Milledoler and Freling- MM 
huysen and Campbell. If as the only land-grant college and state ‘AE 
university in the metropolitan area our practices must vary some-## ae 
what from those most current about us, we shall strive nevertheless a hi 
to do our duty and be content to be unique. There is nothing in our jiu 
state connection to forbid the time-honored Rutgers tradition of #iiaim 
emphasis on quality, not on size. New Jersey does not want a cheap Hiiijame 
university, nor one inferior in scholastic standards. Such an insti- aM 
tution would be no more worthy of the state than of Rutgers. But, agai 
if I mistake not, New Jersey is alive to her need of a university fume 
sound in learning, stressing character above even scholarship, and aaa 
consecrated to the high task of completing the structure of public iim 
education by an institution whose spacious doors are open to all #aismae 
who aspire to the highest privilege of manhood—the beneficent #iima 
exercise of the power of a trained mind. BARRE 

To meet that need I believe I can pledge this day the whole- isis 
hearted consecration of trustees, faculty, alumni, and all friends #iainai 
of Rutgers, and I trust also of all forward-looking citizens of the jiiaiiam 
state. 








Makers 
Syracuse, N.Y. 
PAT. JAN. 21, 1908 


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